"The
Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made."
Psalm 145:8-9
Over
the past few years, my appreciation for the Old Testament has grown
exponentially. Probably my favorite theme of the Hebrew Scriptures is the
change in the conception of the reach of God's blessing and mercy on the part
of the Hebrew people. For much of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people see
themselves as specially blessed because they are chosen by God. The descendants
of Abraham quickly forget that they were chosen to be a blessing for the world,
not to simply be blessed. Not to
trivialize the covenant, but the Hebrew people were chosen by God for a
specific task, kinda like when I was growing up and I was "chosen" to
clean up the kitchen or take out the trash.
There's a slow
development in the Old Testament (if you are going by when these books were
likely written) that moves from a limited understanding of God's mercy
("God is merciful to Israel") to a broad understanding ("The
Lord is good to all…"). You see
this reflected in many of the prophets, especially Isaiah and Jonah. Of course, this is tied up the Jewish
response to exile and a growing understanding of the larger world, moving from
regional skirmishes to being in the middle of clashes between Empires.
As a Christian, I
understand Jesus as the way God has blessed all of creation - freely offering
love and grace and mercy. Jesus is the
culmination and embodiment of God's steadfast love and compassion. And what makes the crucifixion so tragic is
that it shows how humanity responds to the grace, mercy, and love of God,
especially when that grace, mercy, and love is offered to all people. It can be a subversive, counter-cultural, and
even dangerous thing to offer compassion and love to all people. It can be a risky thing to offer love without
regard for difference - and it breaks my heart that many of the people who
resist abundant love and no-strings-attached compassion are the same people who
claim to be disciples of the One who teaches us what unbounded love looks like.
For what it's worth,
I'm sticking with Jesus…
